When users are preparing to make a purchase, they often visit sites more than once, often arriving from different sources.

It is important for advertisers to know certain things — some wish to know which ad first motivated a user to consider making a purchase, and others are curious about which one was the final, convincing factor in the user's decision to place an order.

We recently added new attribution models to Yandex.Direct that can provide advertisers with the clarity they are seeking. In this post, you can find out about these and other minor changes to calculation methods.

More news for Yandex.Direct statistics

You can now assess the performance of your campaigns in Yandex.Direct in three different ways — by First, Last, and Last non-direct click.

Moreover, conversion rates in Yandex.Direct are now calculated differently: the ratio of target clicks to clicks on ads, not just clicks whose final source was Yandex.Direct.

The final difference between Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Metrica is the conversion date. In Yandex.Metrica, a conversion is recorded in reports on the day it took place. Yandex.Direct, however, prioritizes the role of ads over user behavior, so the conversion goes to (the date of) the click that made the purchase happen. In the First click attribution model, that will be the first click on the ad in Yandex.Direct that brought the user to the site. For Last non-direct click, it will be the last click from Yandex.Direct if there were no other important sources of traffic after it, i.e. a click from organic search results or a different advertising platform.

The Last click model considers the last click from Yandex.Direct if it directly preceded the conversion.

Yandex.Direct provides the most detailed information possible about which ads and campaigns contribute to your sales and the effectiveness of the clicks you pay for.

Yandex.Metrica allows you to make broader conclusions about user behavior on your site and the overall effectiveness of different traffic sources.

What is an attribution model?

Lets start from the beginning. An attribution model is a rule that determines how clicks and conversions over a selected period are assigned to specific sources.

Lets say you choose the Last click attribution model, so conversions will be assigned to the source that brought the user to your site right before they converted. Using the First click model, however, will allow you to figure out how the user first made contact with your site.

Now lets imagine that someone saw an ad and decided to make a purchase, but left the tab with your site open for a day. Later, they returned and completed the purchase. Their point of contact in this case was really important, but is not the formal traffic source , so Yandex.Metrica will mark the converting visit as "internal traffic."

The Last non-direct click attribution model is perfect for this type of situation. Conversions from secondary sources (bookmarked sites, addresses typed by the user, internal traffic and traffic from locally saved files) are assigned to the previous non-direct source of traffic to the site. In the case of Yandex.Direct, this would be a click on a Yandex.Direct ad. This is the default attribution model in Yandex.Direct.

Why do methods differ in Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Metrica?

Many advertisers use and are already familiar with the attribution models in Yandex.Metrica. Why repeat these functionalities in Yandex.Direct with the same names but different calculation methods?

The truth is that advertisers use Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Metrica in different ways and to solve different tasks, so it is natural that their calculation and attribution methods differ.

The main difference, however, is in how statistics are gathered: Yandex.Metrica focuses on visits to the site, whereas Yandex.Direct is concerned with clicks on ads. As a result, each service's attribution model reflects its focus.

Yandex.Direct

Yandex.Metrica

What these statistics can do

Statistics help to assess the performance of ad campaigns: conversion costs are distributed between different campaigns and ad groups, making it possible to identify the most effective ones at each stage of the sales funnel and find errors in display settings.

Yandex.Metrica concentrates on analyzing sites and comparing different sources of traffic.

Data and attributions about conversions on different days help you understand when orders really take place, and which sources are the most significant in your communications with your target audience.

How conversion rates are calculated

As the ratio of target visits to to either overall clicks on ads in Yandex.Direct or ads in a certain campaign/ad group.

As the ratio of target visits to overall site visits or by traffic source.

Main differences

Yandex.Direct records conversions on the day of the significant click on the ad. This makes it possible to determine which ad motivated the user to make a purchase, as well as which days your ads perform best.

Yandex.Metrica records conversions on the day they take place.

If, for example, the click took place on June 1, and the conversion on June 10, the "Direct Summary" report in Yandex.Metrica will show one target visit for June 5-10. In Yandex.Direct, however, the report for June 5-10 will show no conversions, but one conversion will appear for the period including June 1.

Why this data matters

By correctly analyzing the information in Yandex.Direct reports, you can get concrete data to help you optimize your creatives and campaign settings, raise bids for your most effective texts, keywords, and time slots.

Yandex.Metrica reports allow you to fully track the user's path from their first contact to their purchase or repeat visits to your site. This allows you to make conclusions about the amount of time users take to make a decision about purchases, the impact on your sales made by different channels of communication, potential technical errors or other difficulties users encounter on your site when they arrive via various traffic sources.

Yandex.Metrica and Yandex.Direct are an ideal team, providing you with information you need about your campaigns' performance as well as valuable feedback about potential improvements to the settings of your campaigns, e.g. with retargeting.

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